that we should see it fraternally, cheerfully to a conclusion.
It was as if he had said, "Poor dear, be easy with her;
she has some natural prejudices; only give her time.
Strange as it may appear to you she was very attractive in 1820.
Meanwhile are we not in Venice together, and what better
place is there for the meeting of dear friends?
See how it glows with the advancing summer; how the sky
and the sea and the rosy air and the marble of the palaces
all shimmer and melt together." My eccentric private errand
became a part of the general romance and the general glory--
I felt even a mystic companionship, a moral fraternity with all
those who in the past had been in the service of art. They had
worked for beauty, for a devotion; and what else was I doing?
That element was in everything that Jeffrey Aspern had written,
and I was only bringing it to the light.

I lingered in the sala when I went to and fro; I used to watch--
as long as I thought decent--the door that led to Miss Bordereau's part
of the house. A person observing me might have supposed I was trying
to cast a spell upon it or attempting some odd experiment in hypnotism.
But I was only praying it would open or thinking what treasure probably
lurked behind it. I hold it singular, as I look back, that I should never
have doubted for a moment that the sacred relics were there; never have
failed to feel a certain joy at being under the same roof with them.
After all they were under my hand--they had not escaped me yet;
and they made my life continuous, in a fashion, with the illustrious
life they had touched at the other end. I lost myself in this
satisfaction to the point of assuming--in my quiet extravagance--
that poor Miss Tita also went back, went back, as I used to phrase it.
She did indeed, the gentle spinster, but not quite so far as Jeffrey Aspern,